One of our major monthly expenses would be groceries. As a matter of fact for many of us it is the biggest expense after mortgage (and possible health insurance). Do you know
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1 Compounding is all about time. The more time you have the more effective it is. The younger you start the higher the rewards. What does it take to convince the 25 year old to start investing? The premise of this blog is that I created a plan to become a millionaire and I set a goal to do it in 10 years. I succeeded (with a slight delay due to the great recession). My portfolio now exceeds a million dollars. What is amazing is that out of that million I never invested more than 450 thousand. Most of my portfolio […]
Compounding; If you’re 25 READ THIS. If you’re not READ ...
As a stark reminder of why I build the nest-egg I have, I learned today that my former manager Leon Sadler is facing severe illness (pre Leukemia). He’s faced with financial needs you’d think you shouldn’t have as you’re supposedly well insured. Financial needs you shouldn’t have to worry about when so much else is going on. I invite you to read his post on LinkedIn. Crowdfunding a man’s fight against Cancer As much as I like to think I’ve financially prepared for something like this I sometimes worry no nest-egg can ever cope with something like this. If at […]
Insurance alone just won’t cut it
1 Pay yourself first is at the core of building wealth. If you don’t set aside money to save, invest or pay of debt (and then save and invest), you will never build any substantial wealth. You have to balance your budget so that something remains at the end of the month to sock away in whatever vehicle it is you choose (just not a sock or the piggy to the side); to build yourself a nest egg, an emergency fund or any other financial goal. Nowadays, it seems “pay yourself first” has become synonymous with “Let us help you, pay […]
Pay yourself first, for yourself, by yourself
Just read an article on how credit cards aren’t always bad. Although I believe there are plenty of problems with credit cards the article makes a good point. Almost all the financial advice out there is geared to those have trouble
Credit cards aren’t all that bad, not for all of ...
There are several different reasons why one should consider creating and maintaining a real budget. As a low income family you need every tool available, to allocate the few dollars you make to the proper places and things. As a middle class income household that is in debt, creating a budget will expose where and why more money is spent than is being brought in. Having that budget will then allow you to redirect funds and save where possible. For upper middle class families (that are not in debt, otherwise, see middle class income household that is in debt) a […]
Creating and maintaining a real budget
This article is the first in the series Creating and maintaining a real budget:
Budgeting: Know what you spend
This article is the 2nd in the series Creating and maintaining a real budget:
Budgeting: Organizing your expenses
This article is the 3rd in the series Creating and maintaining a real budget:
Budgeting: Creating the budget
This article is the 4th in the series Creating and maintaining a real budget:
Budgeting: Live by and maintain the budget
When I was 17 I was stabbed in the leg with a very sharp knife. Don’t worry it didn’t hurt and I wasn’t a hardened criminal. Just a bunch of young kids in school fooling around with a knife. Now, in today’s world I could take this story in so many different directions
Knives, Turtles and the cost of stitches
2 If you’ve landed on this page you might jump to the conclusion that, here it is, another adviser telling me to live on Ramen noodles for the next 20 years. It’s fair to make that jump as we hear it all too often, re-cycle your paper towel, get rid of your car, take the bus and stop eating meat. Yes, certain individuals could certainly benefit from these measures but it wasn’t how I came to build my wealth and neither should many of you. I’ll come right out with it, I was making a six figure salary and that, among […]
Luxury in moderation
What if I told you I saved $720 this year on my cable bill, kept the same channels, increased my internet speed and wait for it… stayed with the same cable company!! If that doesn’t sound good enough, it gets better; all of it took me just an hour of work. It took 15 minutes of research, 20 minutes in the car and 25 minutes in the store. Whenever you read about cutting your budget you inevitably read how we should drop our overrated cable package and save hundreds. Seems a bit drastic, doesn’t it? Here is a little secret […]
Stick with cable and still save hundreds
2 I recently read a post on 10 different ways to waste money on your kids. For some reason the premise of that list doesn’t feel right but regardless, I think I went along with maybe two out of the ten items on the list and questioned the rest. The one that really had me do a double-take said, that one should not to get the family passes as they are a waste of money.
How we save over $4,000 by getting memberships
Average gas prices have dropped down to $2.03 and it certainly doesn’t hurt at the pump as much as it did only one year ago when the average gas price was at $3.28. How does this new reality of low gas prices impact the dollars and cents when it comes to buying a hybrid? Before I get in the new reality let’s look back first. As I look at the mileage on our Prius, currently at 108,000, I think back to the day that we bought it back in 2007. Here’s what we were told by media and other skeptics […]
Should I still buy a hybrid?
After starting this blog, one of my friends from the Netherlands asked me; would I have done the same had I stayed in the Netherlands? An interesting question that I hadn’t put much thought into. Probably, because I knew from a very young age I wouldn’t stay there. The question however could be looked at as a “would’ve/could’ve/should’ve” question. Would’ve First of all, had I stayed in the Netherlands, would I have had the desire or seen the need to become a millionaire like I did here in the States? Sure we all dream about being rich when we were […]
Would’ve could’ve should’ve
I still can’t believe I did it. After 20 years of working as a Software and systems architect, having designed and implemented software for over 60 customers including over 20 fortune 500 companies, after having worked with household names like Coca Cola, CVS Caremark, Bank of America and Symantec and American Express, After having worked in industries varying from Insurance, Financials, Pharma, government all the way to truck manufacturing, I resigned mid 2014 for a well-deserved break. Why did I do it? Well because